Thursday, 19 January 2012

For a given WSDL, there are several different ways to generate Java web service code (CXF, Axis2, etc..). And depending on certain settings within the WSDL file and settings used by the relevant build tool, there are different ways of exposing those services described in the WSDL.

This post will briefly document the generating of Java code for a WSDL using Maven and the jaxws wsimport plugin. It will also show the difference in the services exposed when using wrapped and non-wrapped bindings.

The binding style as can be seen from the @SOAPBinding annotation at the head of the class is BARE ie non-wrapped. The method's args and return parameters are in each case represented as a single Java object. CreateCustomer and CreateCustomerResponse.

This has happened because in the pom.xml file, there is a bindingDirectory tag which points to a folder containing a binding.xml file. This file, shown below, has an enableWrapperStyle tag and the boolean value of false.

If the boolean was true, or if there was no bindingDirectory tag in the pom.xml file, then the default SOAP binding style would be used ie WRAPPED. This would then result in the below generated City81SOAP class:

The method's args are now individual Java objects and the return parameters are each represented as Holder objects with a WebParam.Mode.OUT value denoting they are return objects. This means that return objects are set as opposed to actually being returned in the method's signature.

Another way to specify bindings other than using the binding.xml file is to embed the enableWrapperStyle as a child of the portType but if a WSDL is from a third party, then having to change it every time a new version of the WSDL is released is open to errors.